Fox Biz's Real Competitor Is Fox News

The would be CNBC competitor has had a tough time making inroads
since its launch in 2007, and recent CNBC humiliations (such as
Cramer on Jon Stewart, or the endless Rick Santelli stunts) don't
seemed to have changed that.

Still, the network believes it has found its angle in bailout
fatigue.

With its unabashedly populist tone, Red Ink Week is clearly an
attempt to tap into some of the same anger that fueled April's
tax-day "Tea Party" protests -- protests that Fox is careful to
insist it played no role in organizing, even if its wall-to-wall
coverage did have the effect of promoting them and boosting
turnout. The tea parties were a
ratings hit for Fox News, and it's likely they had a similar
effect on Fox Business. And, while Casone says they weren't the
inspiration for Red Ink Week -- "We've been covering this for
months," she says -- it's obvious the network believes it has
discovered its sweet spot at last.

Sweet spot? Maybe.

We really do enjoy some of the network's populist flair, such as
the fact that when it flashes the ticker of a major financial on
the bottom of its screen, it puts up a big red BAILED OUT marker
above it. CNBC, for all its pro wrestling-like qualities, is way
too genteel to mock the big banks like that.

And we can certainly attest to the fact that anti-corporate,
anti-government populism certainly holds a ton of appeal right
now. But we're still skeptical tha that you can build a network
off of that, because in the end, people disgusted by greed and
corruption don't want to watch a news channel devoted to that.
The people who want to watch business news all day long are
people who are interested in investing and business (not
politics) and so they'll watch CNBC.

If anything, Fox Biz's biggest competitor is not CNBC, but Fox
News, as that's the network that still does a great job of
capturing the angry-with-the-powers-that-be crowd.